US to fund UNESCO?

But Bokova, in her push for the resumption of U.S. funding, has had
an improbable ally: the U.S. administration itself. In Paris, President
Barack Obama’s ambassador to UNESCO is a former congressional staffer,
David Killion, who played a part in bringing the U.S. back into UNESCO
nine years ago. Following the UNESCO vote last year to admit the
Palestinians, Killion came close to apologizing for the U.S. position.
He pledged that the U.S. would keep trying to “find ways to support and
strengthen the important work” of UNESCO.

In February, the U.S. State Department released a budget proposal
that ignored the defunding of UNESCO required by U.S. law, and proposed
$79 million for UNESCO in fiscal year 2013. A footnote, in fine print,
informed readers that the State Department “intends to work with
Congress to seek legislation that would provide authority to waive
restrictions on paying the U.S. assessed contributions to UNESCO.”

Some members of Congress were outraged. Florida representative Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs,
released a statement saying she was “deeply disappointed that, rather
than standing up for U.S. law and for our key ally, Israel, the
Administration is seeking to remove this roadblock to the unilateral
recognition of a ‘Palestinian state.’” Ros-Lehtinen added that any
attempt to waive the law “will pave the way for the Palestinian
leadership’s unilateral statehood scheme to drive on, and sends a
disastrous message that the U.S. will fund U.N. bodies no matter what
irresponsible decisions they make.”

Enough lawmakers shared her views that it seemed for a while that the
administration would not get its wish to reopen the money spigot for
UNESCO. Some deterrent is needed to Palestinian opportunism at the U.N.,
where Obama’s State Department failed last month to stop the General
Assembly from voting to upgrade the Palestinian Authority’s status to
that of non-member observer state. Former ambassador to the U.N. John
Bolton notes that how the U.S. deals with UNESCO could set a vital
precedent for how it would treat other U.N. agencies, such as the World
Health Organization, were they to admit the Palestinian Authority. “If
you waive the prohibition once,” Bolton says, “and waive it for a
trivial little organization like UNESCO, the pressure to waive it
everywhere else will be overwhelming.”

Meanwhile, in Washington, UNESCO has been busy in the back corridors.

...

All of which might be of no great interest were Papagiannis laboring in
Washington to enhance literacy, or perhaps restore cultural artifacts.
But there’s a lot of discussion going on among this crowd about how the
funding law might be waived. On one of the blogs linked to on the
Americans for UNESCO site, there’s a post dated December 1 with the
caption “The Process to Change the Law.” It outlines exactly how that
might be done — by way of an amendment to a big spending bill: “There
will probably not be a specific vote of the Congress on the proposed
amendment. Rather it will be included in a larger bill to appropriate
funds, that will probably be approved before March, 2013. . . . Lacking
strong opposition in the Congress, the waiver will probably be
incorporated into the bill.”

Is this credible? I phoned the author of the post, the same John
Daly. Daly is an ardent supporter of UNESCO, but unlike Papagiannis he
answered my questions. He said he got this information from Peter Yeo,
when Yeo spoke at a November 26 panel hosted by Americans for UNESCO at
George Washington University. Yeo is a former congressional staffer who
now serves as executive director of the Better World Campaign, which is
an advocacy arm of Ted Turner’s well-heeled and well-connected U.N.
Foundation. In a phone interview this week, Yeo repeated the view that a
waiver for UNESCO is likely to go through in “a big omnibus spending
bill,” because “this is a strategy that’s been outlined by the
president.”

When Yeo shared these thoughts at last month’s Americans for UNESCO
panel, he was speaking alongside Assistant Secretary of State for
International Organization Affairs Esther Brimmer. Both of them were
responding to a keynote speech by UNESCO’s George Papagiannis.

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I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-three years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 10 to 31 years and seven grandchildren. Our eldest daughter and eldest son are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com